A Lot Like Perfect

by Kat Cantrell

  For some inexplicable reason, that pricked at the back of his eyelids. He blinked away the very non-masculine moisture and swallowed. “Yeah, I could see the wisdom in that.”

  “Guessing that things didn’t get much better.”

  Isaiah glanced up to meet Lennie’s shrewd gaze. Obviously the man’s comments hadn’t been random. How much did he actually know about the reasons the five of them had rolled into town? “Same evil, different country. Let’s just say our separation from the Navy wasn’t entirely voluntary.”

  “Figured something wasn’t right. All of you had that shell-shocked look about you when you first came to town, as if you weren’t quite done with the job and weren’t quite sure how you ended up in Texas.”

  “You read a guy pretty well,” Isaiah acknowledged with a bemused nod. Of all people to play unlikely therapist… “We still have some fight in us.”

  Lennie unlaced his beefy forearms and tapped the table twice for emphasis. “Good. We need that kind of fierce. Saw dedication in Caleb a mile away or we wouldn’t have voted him into a position where he could do damage to what we’ve built here.”

  “What have you built here?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

  It was the first time he’d thought to ask the question. The first time he’d thought about the town as a whole entity already. Caleb had drummed into everyone’s heads about how critical it was to get the town profitable as a tourist draw, but Superstition Springs had existed for a long time before the SEALs had plunked down in the middle of Serenity’s resort crisis.

  “A community.” Lennie let him absorb that for a minute and then heaved from the bench seat, nearly toppling Isaiah in the process. “You come on by my shop later and you can have my laptop for as long as you need. That infernal thing makes me nuts with all the updates and whatnots. Can’t never get a good signal even though I pay for fancy satellite internet service.”

  Isaiah hid a grin. Given what he’d just learned, Lennie couldn’t be more than about sixty but he acted like he was ninety. “Appreciate it. And the call to your catering friends. I’d be proud to do business with any vets you send my way.”

  Vets. Veterans. Vets were former military. Just like me. Isaiah forced himself to run those concepts through his head despite the pain, because pretending he was still a SEAL didn’t change anything. This was just the first time he’d allowed himself to grieve while thinking about the future in the same breath. Yeah. He was still breathing.

  He’d jumped into the SUV with Hardy to come to Texas because what else did he have to do? Nothing. And he’d spent weeks in Superstition Springs waiting around for the signal to leave. Perhaps that signal hadn’t come because he was already more a part of this community than he’d credited. This is where I’m supposed to be. Where he’d met Aria. Where his life had begun to make sense when he wasn’t looking.

  Here he was in the fold. If he left, he’d only be doing it to keep moving, which accomplished nothing. To heal, he had to stay. That was how he’d stick his pieces back together, once and for all. He saw that now. Aria was worth it, sure. But so was he.

  He still had some fight left in him.

  “What’cha working on?”

  Aria’s voice slid over him, soothing the ragged places in his soul that the conversation with Lennie had roughed up. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday and it had been far too long. Greedily, he drank in her pretty face, which was highlighted by the fact that her hair had been pulled back in a long braid. He held out his hand and when she grasped it, he pulled her into the seat recently vacated by Lennie and kissed her soundly.

  “Hey, you,” he murmured when the kiss finally broke after he remembered they were in public.

  “Guess we’re going full bore on the PDA then,” she commented wryly, her eyes sparkling enough that he guessed she didn’t see that as a problem. “I’m sure the crowd enjoyed the show.”

  “Forget them.” He waved away the onlookers. “They can find their own if they’re jealous. I’m working on plans for the party. You know, the one Caleb asked me to work on?”

  After having such a productive conversation with Ruby and Lennie, he couldn’t wait to see what Aria might have to offer on the subject. Plus, he’d been hoping to make a rooftop trip out of it. That thought got him good and primed for something a lot more private than this corner booth in the middle of a diner.

  “Oh.” Her face registered mild surprise. “I wasn’t thinking you’d sign on for that after…well, you know. What we talked about.”

  He raised a brow. After they’d talked about how he needed to get his crap together? What, was she thinking he couldn’t handle it or something? Because she might be right. But he had to try. The more he thought about settling in here, the easier his heart beat. That had to count for something. “We talked about taking it slow. About how I’m not going to push you away any longer but I need time to figure it out. If I’m taking that time, why not dig into something that will help the town?”

  “Because we weren’t talking about digging in, Isaiah.” Little frown lines appeared around her mouth and he got the first clue that this conversation was distressing her in some way. “We were talking about leaving. Together. I guess—well, I envisioned taking that time on the road. As an adventure.”

  Shades of their last conversation replayed in his head and he definitely didn’t recall agreeing to anything of the sort. And after what had just slowly dawned on him, he definitely wasn’t planning an escape routine. Not now. “I told you I didn’t want to tear you away from here. I meant that. I’m working on ways to stay. Because I want to do that for you.”

  But instead of taking a minute to consider what a big concession he was making, she shook her head. “You said welcome aboard. That’s a metaphor for sailing. As in sailing away from here. That’s what I want to do. I’ve spent the morning working out a plan, where to go. Putting up pictures of beaches and mountains on my dream board. Figuring out how to pay for it. Funny thing, I actually thought for a moment that’s what you were doing too.”

  “Well it’s not.” Nor would it be. He had a lot of healing to do, none of which would happen under the circumstances she was describing. Instead, it sounded a lot like running away, which he frankly excelled at. It was past time to stop. “Besides, you said you’d follow me if I left. I took that seriously. So no leaving.”

  That was the opposite of love in his mind—letting a woman pin her hopes on a broken man who’d lured her away from everything that made sense in her world on the premise that some mystical prediction would keep them together. How about no.

  She fiddled with the salt shaker in the center of the table, one she’d probably refilled a thousand times if he didn’t miss his guess, so her fascination with the thing seemed off. “That wasn’t supposed to make you change your mind. It was supposed to show you that I wasn’t afraid of going.”

  “I’m afraid of leaving,” he admitted, a little shocked at how easily it had come after so many weeks of torturing himself, and he wasn’t all that proud of how long it had taken him to get to this point in the first place. “No, not afraid of leaving itself, but what it represents. I have some things I’m trying to work through.”

  “I know!” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “But those are things that being together someplace else can only help. I get that you’re conflicted about taking things deeper. We can figure that out together, away from here, where there’s so much pressure.”

  “Aria.” He bit back his frustration. How could they still not be communicating after all the conversations they’d had? “I’m not talking about working through us. I have…scars from Syria that aren’t healed yet. That’s why I can’t take things to the next level. Not yet.”

  But he wanted to. Badly. He wanted a lot of things, some he didn’t dare hope for but couldn’t help picturing perfectly, like his ring on her third finger.

  “What are you talking about? You mean your time in the military is the reason everything is backwar
d all at once?” Confusion wormed into her expression. “Is that what you meant when you said there was more to you than meets the eye?”

  “Yeah. Basically.” He blew out a breath and went for broke. “So I’m here. Digging in. Working through it. I want to do that with you by my side—in Superstition Springs. Don’t you see what I’m telling you? I don’t want to leave. For the first time. I’ve finally figured out what I need to do and it’s stay.”

  Surely she could see how huge of a thing this was for him. Surely she could support that, especially if she loved him like she claimed to. They needed to have a really long talk about what was going on with him. The panic attacks that he pretended were something else. His inability to make a decision. To accept responsibility for anything. None of this was her fault, but finally, he could see a light at the end. Aria held that light.

  If he reached for it, he could find his glue.

  “That’s not true,” she whispered, obviously stricken. “That can’t be true. I’m finally figuring out some things too. And the way that I need to heal from the scars that I carry around is to leave. With you. That’s what this is all about.”

  “That’s not what this is about. I have to stay.”

  “I have to leave.”

  They stared at each other, neither flinching. Until they both did. He shook his head, his own confusion marring the moment. “What scars? Where is this coming from?”

  “From feeling like I’ve been left behind for the last eight years. Isaiah.” Her warm hand covered his and he clung to it desperately, lacing their fingers together tight. It didn’t fix the sensation that everything was sliding away, nor did it halt the momentum. “I need to stop feeling like I don’t have any control over my own fate. Like I’m just waiting around for the next person to leave. I can’t do it anymore. I have to be the one to leave. I thought—well, obviously I thought wrong. But it doesn’t change that you loving me gives me the courage to do what I should have done a long time ago.”

  The sincerity and genuine pain radiating from her gaze sliced through him as he finally internalized what she was telling him. She was leaving. And he couldn’t follow her.

  Oh, sure, he could. He could do lots of things. Except tear himself away from this community that he’d somehow become a part of, one where he had people—more than one—who understood what it felt like to fight for freedom in a world that didn’t want you to succeed. Who knew what it felt like to come home not quite whole.

  That’s why he’d resisted leaving for so long. Why he couldn’t lay it on the line with Hardy and tell him he was on his way out the door.

  He had a new purpose in Superstition Springs, a place to heal, a place to thrive. Be productive as he fought for something different but no less important—himself. The springs had worked their magic after all. And he didn’t think he’d find that anywhere else. Not right now. Maybe later, after he’d sorted through everything enough that breathing became natural and easy again.

  “So somehow we’ve gotten to the point where we can be in love but to become better people, we have to do it apart. How does that make any sense?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Misery flooded her expression. “But I don’t see a way around it.”

  It was a paradox of the worst kind. The gift of the Magi gone horribly wrong. “Can I ask you to stay? Would that make a difference?”

  Her lips lifted in a brief, completely unamused smile. “You don’t want to be the one who holds me here when the reasons I have to go are the same reasons you have to stay. Right?”

  “Someone really stupid must have said that,” he muttered. Trust her to use his own words against him. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t know that you are.” Her thumb caressed his knuckle and her warmth breeched his skin to spread. “I’m not going to stop being in love with you.”

  Fat lot of good that did him. “Yeah, but I want you here. Where I can…do things.”

  So many things. The sheer number of things he hadn’t done yet with her and wanted to paraded through his head. Only a few of them involved closed doors. That hurt maybe the most, not being able to treat her to the romantic encounter she deserved for her first time.

  He had the sudden, compelling urge to tell her that. To spill out all the things in his heart in an effort to sway her. They were all right there on the tip of his tongue. Stuff he should have said already, arguments to the contrary. Bargains. Maybe he could go with her for just a week and then come back.

  But he didn’t say any of that. For the first time, despite knowing influence and motivation were his best skills, he bit it back. He couldn’t use words to convince her to stay. That wouldn’t be fair. To either of them. She’d made up her mind to go, same as he’d put his own stake in the ground.

  He let go. “I’ll be here.”

  And then he watched her walk away for what he expected would be the last time.

  Eighteen

  Havana took Aria to the tiny bus station in La Grange. In a rare feat, her sister drove Caleb’s SUV the entire way without saying a word, and of course it was the one time Aria would have preferred some chatter. How was she supposed to forget the devastation on Isaiah’s face during that last conversation if she didn’t have something to distract her?

  It was only at the curb that Havana finally exhibited an ounce of mercy and broke her silence. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Aria nodded. That was the hope. Of course, the huge hole in her chest felt more like she’d lost everything. But that would fade in time. Time she fully planned to give herself. This wasn’t a lark or something designed to prove a point. The pain just made it all the more critical to figure out why she couldn’t accept that Isaiah meant it when he said he would stay in Superstition Springs.

  Because that was the bottom line. She couldn’t stand around and wait for him to leave her. It didn’t matter how many pretty promises he made—everyone abandoned her eventually.

  And it was on her to become someone that people didn’t leave. That could only be accomplished by taking action. By being brave. This journey was the scariest thing she’d ever done. Sure she’d have liked nothing more than to have someone right next to her, holding her hand. Isaiah specifically. But he’d refused to come with her, which honestly was for the best.

  She just didn’t like it.

  “Do you have enough money?” Havana asked as Aria stuck her hand out to open the door.

  “I don’t know,” Aria mumbled and shifted her gaze out the window to watch the people milling about on the sidewalk in front of the gray building housing the bus station. “How much is enough?”

  Shouldn’t the bus station be grander or have more buses waiting to whisk people away to a new life? The building was small and kind of depressing. Three long silver vehicles idled by numbered chutes that reminded her of cattle runs leading into a barn, but otherwise, there was little to indicate the purpose of this place.

  “Depends on what you’re trying to do. Stay in a hotel for a few weeks? Rent an apartment? Go to Disneyland?”

  Aria glanced over at her sister. All good questions that she didn’t have an answer to. “I have enough to buy a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles and that’s the important part. I’ll figure out something when I get there.”

  That’s what all the heroines did in her favorite books. They were smart, resourceful. They took on the world with no apologies and viewed each step as an opportunity. They did not abort the quest before taking step one.

  Havana’s lips pursed and she could tell her sister wanted to say a whole bunch of things in response, but she didn’t. It must have taken an act of sheer will for her to keep her opinions to herself. They’d never picked up that discussion from the other day, the one that Isaiah had cut short. And Aria had no intention of hashing that out again anyway. What would be the use? To get an apology from Havana? That wouldn’t change anything.

  “You can call me anytime if you need me to come get you,” Ha
vana finally said. “No matter where you are.”

  “Really? What if I’m in Alaska?” she couldn’t help but retort. That was nowhere in her plans, but still.

  Havana just turned up her hands. “Even then. You think distance makes a difference when my baby sister needs me?”

  Yeah. She did think that because it made a huge difference, but Aria was the only one who seemed to understand that. “Distance is the whole point of this excursion.”

  “Because you’re trying to escape me.” Havana’s mouth flattened. “I’m bossy and difficult. You can say it.”

  “This is not about you.”

  Except it was. It was one hundred percent about how everyone else in her life had gotten to go places and do things and hadn’t had one thought for how Aria would feel about being abandoned. How hard it was to be the one left behind. How that would become the defining phenomena that drove her decisions. Even after spelling that out, still Havana had said nothing.

  And now Aria was the one doing the leaving. Finally. Was it supposed to hurt her this much though?

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you what to do this time,” Havana said firmly though Aria would swear there was a glint in her sister’s eyes that meant she was trying not to cry. “You’re an adult and you can make your own decisions.”

  “That wasn’t ever in question. And for the record, I’ve never minded you telling me what to do. What I minded was when you left.”

  “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

  One tear finally worked its way down her sister’s face and that was nearly Aria’s undoing. Havana wasn’t a crier. She was a get things done kind of woman, the likes of which Aria had always admired.

  “It helps.” But it didn’t change anything.

  Aria was fixing herself once and for all. She opened the SUV door and forced herself to step onto the curb, then collect her bags. Because she was a masochist apparently, she turned for one final tremulous smile for her sister. “Tell Ember I said bye and that I’m grateful to her for taking over my job at Ruby’s.”